Appearance

Mentality

Personal history

All Shuggoths are telepathically vulnerable to the minds of others, as this was the primary means the Elder Things used to control them. Despite this, some of the Shuggoths, full of volatile rage, managed to raise a rebellion against their creators. Many were destroyed, and the rest abandoned, left to seethe and go mad, shapeless and purposeless, when the Elder Things left a cooling Earth for the stars as the Hyborean/Oligocene Ice Ace began.
 
The creature that eventually became Mel roamed the lost cities beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the deep seas until one day, it encountered a concentrated howl of rage and anguish that recalled that long-ago barely remembered rebellion. It had stumbled across a slave ship bound for the Americas, and the human slaves' horror and helplessness resonated perfectly with the amorphous creature's memories - and yet, these slaves were not shapeless tools. They were people, too.
 
The creature spent several centuries struggling to emulate and eventually interact with that personhood. Mistakes were made, in confusion and pain; ships were sunk; sailors were driven mad. The shuggoth learned to make human faces, and human speech, although it struggled to stay coherent for long.
 
One day, it rescued a drowning sailor who didn't react with terror or revulsion when it lost its grip on its human masks. The whaleman dubbed the creature "My Dear Pelagian," and for several decades Pel and his sailor were hunters together, working for an Agency operating out of (and making considerable use of) the Elder Things' ruins, and then a satellite branch in New York after the cold got to be too much for the sailor's old bones. When he died, Pel's new partner was considerably less open-minded.
 
Pel left the Agency and spent some time mourning at sea, before eventually rejoining the human the world and changing his name and identity to Melvin Southgate. He couldn't bear to stay on the East coast, though, so he headed west, eventually ending up in the strange tangle of occurrences in Bermway.

Education

Mel has no formal education, but he has been a voracious reader for several centuries.

Employment

Every few years, Mel sheds his human shape and returns to ZE SEA, where his cold and pressure resistant amorphous form is entirely comfortable scavenging shipwrecks for lost treasure or valuable artifacts. This is how he keeps himself in sushi, sunglasses, and fancy suits.

Intellectual Characteristics

Despite his many years dedicated to building himself a stable identity, he still has some deep-seated instincts to follow the will of the group around him. It's easier to go long, unless his convictions get involved.

Morality & Philosophy

Mel cares about the freedom of all creatures. He distrusts power and despises kidnappers.

person.sexuality

Shy hentai.

person.gender_identity

Maleish. Currently. He/it.

Known Languages

English, French, Creole, and Catte. He probably speaks some bits of Yoruba, Igbo, and Bantu languages, and probably some R'lyehian.

Personality

Social